The present invention relates to satellite communications in general and, in particular, to dynamic frequency assignment.
Satellite communications systems often have a limited amount of available bandwidth to be allocated to terminals. In many multi-beam system designs, certain frequency channels are allocated to each beam with a static allocation. However, the resource needs for the terminals within each beam may change over time, and thus the particular number of frequency channels which should be allocated to beams can vary over time. When there is a finite amount of available spectrum, static frequency assignment in a multi-beam system may not be sufficient to allow re-allocation of bandwidth.
It may, therefore, be desirable to utilize a system design in which particular frequency channels are assigned to beams dynamically, in response to requests from terminals.